AWS for Software Companies Podcast

Rapid7's Vice President of Data and AI Laura Ellis shares how they built an AI-first cybersecurity platform by investing in AI platform AND data infrastructure simultaneously.Topics Include:Rapid7 processes massive cybersecurity data across exposure management, threat detection, and managed SOC.84% of security analysts want to quit due to data overload burnout.Challenge: investing in AI platform AND data infrastructure simultaneously, not sequentially.Built security data lake with AWS, unified IDs, and standardized schemas across products.Used traditional machine learning for 10 years before generative AI emerged.Generative AI raised questions about business impact; agentic AI enables full automation.Chose AWS for scale, model marketplace flexibility, and true partnership on capacity.Co-development incubator with SOC team proved critical: equal responsibility, full-time collaboration.Launched alert triage automation, SOC assistant chatbot, and incident report generation tools.Built AI platform with guardrails after pen testers generated cookie recipes costing money.One agentic feature initially cost-estimated at $140 million before optimization and guidance.Future: more AI features, granular customer configuration, and bring-your-own-model capabilities.Participants:Laura Ellis – Vice President, Data & AI, Software Engineering, Rapid7See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Industry leaders from Coder, Scale AI, and Suger reveal why 95% of AI pilots fail—and share the frameworks that actually work to get agents into production.Topics Include:Panel features leaders from Coder, Scale AI, and Suger discussing agentic AI.MIT report reveals 95% of AI pilots fail to reach production.Challenges are rarely technical—they're organizational, mindset, and people-driven instead.Companies lack documented tribal knowledge needed to train agents effectively.Many organizations attempt AI where deterministic, rules-based automation would work better."Freestyle agents" concept: Some problems shouldn't be solved by agents at all.Regulated industries struggle when asking agents to handle highly differentiated, complex tasks.Common mistakes: building one universal agent or separate agents for every use case.Post-billing workflows and business-critical operations aren't ready for AI's black box.VCs pressure companies to define "AI-native"—but nobody has clear answers yet.Scale AI uses five maturity levels; Coder uses three tiers for adoption.Success metrics span operational readiness, business impact, and technology performance indicators.Production requires data governance, context, A/B testing, and robust fallback mechanisms.Even Anthropic uses agents conservatively: research tasks and log triage, no write-access.Path to 50% success requires agile frameworks, people change, and proper AI talent.Participants:Ben Potter - VP of Product, CoderRaviteja Yelamanchili - Head of Solutions Engineering, Scale AIJon Yoo - CEO, SugerAdam Ross - US, Partner Sales Sr. Leader, Amazon Web ServicesSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Coralogix CEO Ariel Assaraf reveals how their observability lake lets companies own their data, reduce costs, and use AI agents to transform monitoring into actionable business intelligence.Topics Include:Coralogix solves observability scaling issues: tool disparity, sprawling costs, limited control.Streama parses data pre-ingestion; DataPrime queries directly on customer's own S3 buckets.AI will generate massive unstructured data, making observability challenges exponentially worse.CTOs should ask: Can observability data drive business decisions beyond just monitoring?Observability lake lets you own data in open format versus vendor lock-in.OLLI designed as research engine, not another natural language database interface.Ask business questions like "What's customer experience today?" instead of technical queries.Trading platform unified tools, reduced resolution time 6x, now uses for business intelligence.Future: Multiple AI personas, automated investigations, hypothesis-driven alerts without human prompting.AWS partnership enables S3 innovation, Bedrock models, and strong co-sell growth motion.Data sovereignty solved: customers control their S3, remove access anytime, own encryption.Business data experience will match consumer AI tools within two years fundamentally.Participants:Ariel Assaraf – Chief Executive Officer, CoralogixBoaz Ziniman – Principal Developer Advocate - EMEA, Amazon Web ServicesSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

ISV leaders from Automation Anywhere, DataVisor, and Sumo Logic share battle-tested strategies for deploying AI agents at scale, including pricing models, proof of concepts and ROI.Topics Include:Panel brings together ISV leaders from automation, fraud detection, and security operations.Companies rethinking entire business processes rather than automating incremental portions with agents.Start with immutable data before tackling real-time changing data in production.Intent for change must come from board, CEO, and customers simultaneously.Challenge: proving agent value beyond CSAT when internal teams block deployment.Sumo Logic measures Mean Time to Resolution, aiming to cut hours to zero.DataVisor cuts fraud alert resolution from one hour down to twenty minutes.Customers demand reliability as workflows shift from deterministic to probabilistic agent decisions.Automation Anywhere spent three years making every platform component fully agent-ready.Focus on business outcomes, not chasing every new model release each week.Human oversight still critical—agents are task-oriented and prone to hallucinations and drift.Humans validate agent findings, then let agents scale actions across hundreds instances.Pricing experiments range from platform-plus-consumption to outcome-based to decision-event models.Token pricing doesn't work due to varied data modalities and complexity.Next two quarters: more POCs moving to production with productive agents deployed.Future prediction: enterprise apps becoming systems of knowledge powered by MCP protocol.Participants:Jay Bala - Senior Vice President of Product, Automation AnywhereKedar Toraskar – VP Product Partnerships, DataVisorBill Peterson - Senior Director, Product Marketing, Sumo LogicJillian D'Arcy - ISV Senior Leader, Amazon Web ServicesSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Learn how Coveo automated LLM migration like a "mind transplant," building frameworks to optimize prompts and maintain quality across model changes.Topics Include:AWS and Coveo discuss their Gen-AI innovation using Amazon Bedrock and Nova.Coveo faced multi-cloud complexity, data residency requirements, and rising AI costs.Coveo indexes enterprise content across hundreds of sources while maintaining security permissions.The platform powers search, generative answers, and AI agents across commerce and support.CRGA is Coveo's fully managed RAG solution deployed in days, not months.Customers see 20-30% case reduction; SAP Concur saves €8 million annually.Original architecture used GPT on Azure; migration targeted Nova Lite on Bedrock.Infrastructure setup involved guardrails and load testing for 70 billion monthly tokens.Migrating LLMs is like a "mind transplant"—prompts must be completely re-optimized.Coveo built automated evaluation framework testing 20+ behaviors with each system change.Nova Lite improved answer accuracy, reduced hallucinations, and matched GPT-4o Mini performance.Migration simplified governance, enabled regional compliance, reduced latency, and lowered costs.Participants:Sebastien Paquet – Vice President, AI Strategy, CoveoYanick Houngbedji – Solutions Architect Canada ISV, Amazon Web ServicesSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Dion Hinchcliffe, Vice President of CIO Practice at Futurum Group, reveals how EMEA software companies can turn Europe's regulatory rigor into a competitive superpower while navigating AI adoption and cloud transformation challenges.Topics Include:AWS surveyed 750+ EMEA software companies to understand their growth challenges.European tech firms lag US counterparts but AI presents catch-up opportunity.EMEA companies prioritize data sovereignty and privacy over rapid cloud adoption.Tier-2 local cloud providers often lack capabilities needed for global scaling.Cloud-native companies show faster growth and innovation than traditional competitors.Best practices for cloud architecture now well-established across major platforms.CEOs lead AI transformation; 100% of tracked companies using AI substantially.Software companies report 80% of customers now requesting AI capabilities.IT talent shortage requires solutions needing minimal specialized skills to deploy.ERP modernization accelerating as cloud-native systems offer superior capabilities.Europe's regulatory rigor becomes competitive advantage in trustworthy technology.AI adoption continues at light speed; quantum computing emerges within five years.Participants:Dion Hinchcliffe - Vice President of CIO Practice, Futurum GroupMassimo Ghislandi – Head of EMEA Marketing for Software Companies, Amazon Web ServicesSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Experienced CISOs from MongoDB and Gusto reveal proven frameworks for translating complex cybersecurity metrics into board-friendly presentations that drive decision-making.Topics Include:Security leaders discuss challenges of presenting technical cybersecurity topics to boardsMongoDB CISO presents three times in six months, Gusto director five timesThree-angle metrics framework: environmental threats, prevention quality, and detection/response speed capabilitiesBoard members switch contexts frequently, requiring extensive education and simplified heat mapsRepeatable presentation models help board members follow consistent data across meetingsAudit committees get different depth than general board updates on programsNew technologies like AI require educating boards on risks versus opportunitiesFoundational security principles like zero trust remain constant regardless of technologySecurity buzzwords need translation appendices since board members forget technical definitionsFinancial services background helps translate cyber risks into dollar amounts boards understandThird-party penetration testing provides independent validation but requires vendor rotation strategiesLimited 30-minute board time means trusting security leaders' vendor diligence decisionsFirst-time CISOs should educate on threat landscape then tailor strategy to companyBalance discussing shiny new technologies with essential foundational security blocking and tacklingAI implementation spans customer features, infrastructure security, and augmenting security capabilities internallyParticipants:Sean Josephson - Sr. Director of Information Security, GustoJulien Soriano – Sr. Vice President, CISO, MongoDBGee Rittenhouse - Vice President, Security Services, Amazon Web ServicesFurther Links:Gusto: Website – LinkedInMongoDB: Website – LinkedIn – AWS MarketplaceSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

John Skinner of Vectra AI shares how cyber attackers are democratizing sophisticated attacks using dark web tools, and why AI-powered hybrid defense is now essential for enterprise security.Topics Include:Vectra AI: 13-year-old cybersecurity company founded as "AI native" from day oneBuilt on machine learning assumption while competitors treated AI as afterthoughtGenerative AI represents the latest evolution in their comprehensive AI journeyStarted pairing threat researchers with ML developers to codify attack behaviorsAdded agentic AI in 2018 for correlation across space and timeUses AWS Security Lake, GuardDuty, and recently became AWS Bedrock customerSuccess measured by reducing "dwell time" from initial attack to detectionAchieved 60% faster alerts, 51% faster monitoring, 50% faster investigation timesCustomers should evaluate vendor's data science quality and algorithm training yearsEvolved hybrid defense approach as attacks start anywhere, go everywhereAI handles high-volume correlation while humans focus on analytical decisionsFuture challenge: democratized cyber attacks using readily available dark web toolsParticipants:John Skinner – Vice President Corporate/Business Development, Vectra AIFurther Links:Vectra AI: Website – LinkedIn – AWS Marketplace - YouTubeSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Vice President of Engineering James Musson reveals how Lucanet integrated multiple acquired solutions into a unified platform, achieving 3-month integration timelines while serving 6,000+ customers.Topics Include:Lucanet evolved from financial consolidation tool to comprehensive CFO solution platformPlatform covers consolidation, planning, ESG reporting, tax compliance, and cash managementThree key differentiators: easy to use, fast time-to-value, innovative AI featuresAI-powered XBRL tagging reduces days of manual work to minutes with 90% accuracyComplex challenge: integrating multiple acquired tech stacks with cloud-native platform developmentBuilt micro front-end architecture and platform services for seamless user experienceCustom control plane automates customer onboarding and manages rolling upgrades safelyLatest acquisition integrated into platform within three months, unprecedented speedStrong company culture focuses on innovation, hackathons, and continuous learningAI bootcamps and tech lunch sessions keep 6,000+ customer engineering teams engagedBalances AI innovation with regulatory compliance using deterministic core processesHeavy AWS adoption with serverless technologies handles peaky financial reporting workloadsParticipants:James Musson – Vice President, Engineering, LucanetFurther Links:Lucanet: Website – LinkedInSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Learn how Trellix transformed into a cloud-first security leader through strategic AWS partnership, generating $500M+ pipeline and winning major enterprise deals like Airbus.Topics Include:Trellix's transformation: From legacy McAfee/FireEye to cloud-first cybersecurity solutions with AWSPartnership lessons: How AWS enabled 27-year-old ePolicy Orchestrator's successful cloud migration journeyLegacy transition advice: Embrace innovation, don't follow the "Sears model" of resisting changeAI go-to-market strategy: Dev days, marketplace usage, and Bedrock/Nova integrations driving customer adoptionCustomer AI concerns: Addressing data security fears and proving AI doesn't train on customer dataIntegration philosophy: XDR connects with AWS native services and even competitor tools seamlessly$12M Airbus win: Six-country enterprise deal showcasing collaborative sales across AWS teams and marketplaceFuture opportunities: AI-powered threat detection innovations and $500M+ pipeline through AWS marketplaceParticipants:Taylor Mullins - Sr. Solutions Architect, TrellixBrian Shadpour - General Manager, Security B2B Software Sales, Amazon Web ServicesFurther Links:Trellix: Website – LinkedIn – AWS MarketplaceSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/